Photographer Makes Incredible Point By Shooting The Same Tree Every Day For A Year With An iPhone

In 2012, photographer Mark Hirsch was in a serious automobile accident that left him with severe injuries. His condition forced him to rest his body for three months with very little activity.

"It was a physically and emotionally challenging experience," he says.

Around the same time, he bought an iPhone, and a friend, raving about the phone's camera, challenged him to use it for serious photography.

After Hirsch posted two beautiful pictures of a tree in a cornfield near his Wisconsin home, his friend suggested he use the iPhone to take a photo a day of the tree for a year.

Hirsch rose to the technological and creative dare, shooting the tree from hundreds of angles in all conditions, calling it "challenging but also quite liberating."

His resulting project, "That Tree," has been recently compiled into a book and a calendar. We asked Hirsch to share three weeks of images in chronological order with us, along with his own captions from each day. You can see the whole year on his website and on his Facebook page.

Feb. 20, Day 334: "Contrasty, cold, and colorful! It was a brisk but sunny -2 when my publishing partner Warren Winter and I headed out to wait for this mornings sunrise. I photographed That Tree and he photographed me."

Feb. 21, Day 335: "Destined to be the heart of a future oak, an acorn and fallen leaf are exposed by the recent thaw. By the end of the day, they are forecast to be buried under a fresh blanket of six to eight inches of snow."

Feb. 28, Day 342: "With the grayness of the day making me blue, I opted to embrace the cool hues of dusk to dress up a familiar scene."

March 1, Day 343: "I had a crazy busy day which concluded with a fun interview with the Sierra Club. I made a late trek out to shoot my tree photo and discovered this record of last night's acorn foraging feast by the deer."

March 3, Day 345: "Looking so hard for that perfect image has made me blind to the simple beauty of first light, a pastoral landscape and the enduring presence of a sentinel oak."

March 4, Day 346: "My occasional fortune with lighting makes me wonder about the power of That Tree. I spent an hour wandering visually, settling down to wait and watch. The sky opened up with color and light allowing me to capture the scene. The sky closed and I walked back to reality."